The price of bitcoin has risen by more than $1,000 over the last week, following a record-breaking surge in online searches for "btc".

The price of bitcoin has risen by more than $1,000 over the last week, following a record-breaking surge in online searches for "btc".

It is unclear what is causing such a spike, although some cryptocurrency analysts have speculated that traders may be manipulating Google searches in order to artificially boost the price.

Google Trends, which tracks search volume on the company's search engine, shows interest in the term "btc" suddenly shot up on 29 August and has continued to systematically spike at 6am each morning since.

The mysterious trend is not limited to one country, with the US, UK, Russia, Australia and Brazil all experiencing major upticks in search volume at this time. Unusually, the country to see the biggest increase in searches for 'btc' is Romania.

In recent years there has been a strong correlation between online interest in bitcoin and its price.

The cryptocurrency hit a record high of $20,000 in 2017, coinciding with record-high search levels on Google.
Since the recent online search surge, the price of bitcoin has risen steadily, but is nowhere near the levels it reached two years ago.

The cryptocurrency is currently trading at around $10,800, having been trading below $9,400 before 29 August.